In an ad hoc communication, a multi-hop communication is performed to send a packet to a radio communication apparatus as a final destination when a radio communication apparatus relays a packet that is transmitted from another radio communication apparatus. In a conventional technique, packet forwarding processing in the multi-hop communication is performed in a layer that manages routing processing, for example, a layer 3 of Open System Interconnection (OSI) reference model.
There is a proposal of a radio communication network in which a radio communication apparatus 31, which includes a forwarding module belonging to a Media Access Control (MAC) layer that is lower than an Internet layer, forwards a packet by the multi-hop communication.